May Quotes - Page 31

• It is not the most distinguished achievements that men's virtues or vices may be best discovered; but very often an action of small note. An casual remark or joke shall distinguish a person's real character more than the greatest sieges, or the most important battles.

  Plutarch

  Real, Character, Men

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• Essential characteristics of a gentleman: The will to put himself in the place of others; the horror of forcing others into positions from which he would himself recoil; and the power to do what seems to him to be right without considering what others may say or think.

  John Galsworthy

  Character, Power, Thinking

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• Thus it is well to seem merciful, faithful, humane, sincere, religious, and also to be so; but you must have the mind so disposed that when it is needful to be otherwise you may be able to change to the opposite qualities.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Religious, Character, Opposites

  Niccolo Machiavelli (2017). “The Prince”, p.56, Knickerbocker Classics

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• Whatever you lend let it be your money, and not your name. Money you may get again, and, if not, you may contrive to do without it; name once lost you cannot get again.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Character, Names, Lost

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• Confessions may be good for the soul but they are bad for the reputation.

  Thomas Dewar, 1st Baron Dewar

  Character, Soul, Reputation

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• Whenever commandments are given they create difficulties for people, because by the time they are given they are already out of date. Life moves so fast; it is a dynamism, it is not static. It is not a stagnant pool, it is a Ganges, it goes on flowing. It is never the same for two consecutive moments. So one thing may be right this moment, and may not be right the next. Then what to do? The only possible thing is make people so aware that they themselves can decide how to respond to a changing life.

  Rajneesh

  Life Changing, Moving, Two

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• Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others.

  William O. Douglas

  Religious, Real, Paganism

  "United States v. Ballard, 322 U.S. 78". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. April 24, 1944.

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• Spirituality is not a function of occupation or calling. A scientist may be more spiritual than a theologian; a teacher may be more spiritual than an officer. Spirituality is determined by personal outlook and priorities. It is evident in our words and actions.

  Dallin H. Oaks

  Spiritual, Teacher, Priorities

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• As for the presence of large NGF [nerve growth factor] sources in snake venom and male genital organs, they may be conceived as instances of bizarre evolutionary gene expression.

  Rita Levi-Montalcini

  Science, Expression, Snakes

  "The Saga of the Nerve Growth Factor: Preliminary Studies, Discovery, Further Development".

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• If a single cell, under appropriate conditions, becomes a man in the space of a few years, there can surely be no difficulty in understanding how, under appropriate conditions, a cell may, in the course of untold millions of years, give origin to the human race.

  Herbert Spencer

  Science, Men, Cells

  Herbert Spencer (1864). “The Principles of Biology”, p.350

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• It is with our entire past ... that we desire, will and act ... from this survival of the past it follows that consciousness cannot go through the same state twice. The circumstances may still be the same, but they will act no longer on the same person ... that is why our duration is irreversible.

  Henri Bergson

  Science, Past, Survival

  Henri Bergson (2014). “Creative Evolution”, p.13, Lulu Press, Inc

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• The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.

  Robert Ardrey

  Stars, Science, Men

  "African Genesis: A Personal Investigation Into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man". Book by Robert Ardrey, 1961.

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• The neutral zone of selective advantage in the neighbourhood of zero is thus so narrow that changes in the environment, and in the genetic constitution of species, must cause this zone to be crossed and perhaps recrossed relatively rapidly in the course of evolutionary change, so that many possible gene substitutions may have a fluctuating history of advance and regression before the final balance of selective advantage is determined.

  Ronald Fisher

  Zero, Science, Balance

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• To produce a really good biological theory one must try to see through the clutter produced by evolution to the basic mechanisms lying beneath them, realizing that they are likely to be overlaid by other, secondary mechanisms. What seems to physicists to be a hopelessly complicated process may have been what nature found simplest, because nature could only build on what was already there.

  Francis Crick

  Nature, Lying, Science

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• We may... have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth... The developmental process described in this essay has been a process of evolution from primitive beginnings-a process whose successive stages are characterized by an increasingly detailed and refined understanding of nature. But nothing that has been or will be said makes it a process of evolution toward anything.

  Thomas Kuhn

  Nature, Science, Understanding

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• You must not say that this cannot be, or that that is contrary to nature. You do not know what Nature is, or what she can do; and nobody knows; not even Sir Roderick Murchison, or Professor Huxley, or Mr. Darwin, or Professor Faraday, or Mr. Grove, or any other of the great men whom good boys are taught to respect. They are very wise men; and you must listen respectfully to all they say: but even if they should say, which I am sure they never would, 'That cannot exist. That is contrary to nature,' you must wait a little, and see; for perhaps even they may be wrong.

  Charles Kingsley

  Wise, Science, Boys

  Charles Kingsley (2015). “The Water-Babies”, p.38, Booklassic

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• The agricultural co-operative movement has been a severe ideological and political struggle from the very beginning. No cooperative can be established without going through such a struggle. Before a brand-new social system can be built on the site of the old, the site must be swept clean. Invariably, remnants of old ideas reflecting the old system remain in people's minds for a long time, and they do not easily give way. After a co-operative is established, it must go through many more struggles before it can be consolidated. Even then, the moment it relaxes its efforts it may collapse.

  Mao Zedong

  Struggle, Ideas, Long

  Zedong Mao (1972). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung”, p.33, China Books

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• Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China's 600 million people is that they are “poor and blank”. This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing. Poverty gives rise to the desire for changes, the desire for action and the desire for revolution. On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written; the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted.

  Mao Zedong

  Beautiful, Character, Reality

  "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works".

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• Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralisation of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

  Albert Einstein

  Powerful, Rights, Views

  Albert Einstein (2013). “Einstein on Politics: His Private Thoughts and Public Stands on Nationalism, Zionism, War, Peace, and the Bomb”, p.446, Princeton University Press

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• Use your youth so that you may have comfort to remember it when it has forsaken you, and not sigh and grieve at the account thereof.

  Walter Raleigh

  Grieving, Comfort, Use

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• Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favor. She imagines herself not only certain of accomplishing every adventure, but of obtaining those rewards which the accomplishment may deserve. She is not easily persuaded to believe that the force of merit can be resisted by obstinacy and avarice, or its luster darkened by envy and malignity.

  Samuel Johnson

  Believe, Adventure, Accomplishment

  Samuel Johnson (1828). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.199

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• More than anything, it's a game of innocence. Politicians may come and go, but they always get booed at the ballpark.

  Pete Hamill

  Baseball, Games, Innocence

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• In a lot of scientists, the ratio of wonder to skepticism declines in time. That may be connected with the fact that in some fields-mathematics, physics, some others-the great discoveries are almost entirely made by youngsters.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Discovery, Ratios

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• Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing something about who that is. It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not, namely, the path that is your life. Meditation may help us see that this path we call our life has direction; that it is always unfolding, moment by moment; and that what happens now, in this moment, influences what happens next.

  Jon Kabat-Zinn

  Being Yourself, Knowing, Meditation

  Jon Kabat-Zinn (2005). “Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life”, Hyperion

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• Some scientists find, or so it seems, that they get their best ideas when smoking; others by drinking coffee or whisky. Thus there is no reason why I should not admit that some may get their ideas by observing, or by repeating observations.

  Karl Popper

  Drinking, Coffee, Science

  Karl Popper, W.W. Bartley, III (2013). “Realism and the Aim of Science: From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.36, Routledge

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